To My Son: A Happy Birthday Letter

Dear Gavin,
You're 5 now, and only getting more amazing every day. I have really truly enjoyed this past year of our time together. Four years old is your best age yet - 80% sweetness, 20% mischief, a perfect combination.
One thing that really sticks out about you is your kindness, you are always considerate of others, you worry about making your brother and sister happy. You share your toys and your time with each of them so readily. You are able to play very nicely with either, or both, of your siblings, playing Lego or Wii with Levi, playing family or animals with Mikayla. Of course your days are not without incident - which often comes from the constant pestering your little shadow brother doles out, and you finally loosing your patience with him. The other thing that gets you in trouble is rough-housing with Levi and getting just a little too rough, you forget your own strength with him (quite often). By far you get the fewest "timeouts" of the bunch, you manage to keep yourself out of trouble most of the time.
You are a child of pure imagination - you love to dress-up and role play scenes you have memorised from shows or you dream up on your own. 90% of the time I ask you to get dressed in the morning, you come back to me in costume, ready to do just about anything, so long as you can stay in costume!
It's not all "fun" for you though, you are a very hard worker. You had speech therapy sessions this year, as a few sounds were not happening on their own ("ch", "sh", "st", "sk", and "j" among a few others). Boy did you ever work at these sessions, even prompting me and dad to practise with you between sessions. Your therapy only lasted a few months, you were able to learn your sounds quickly, mastering at least one sound per week. Recently you have taken quite a liking to numbers and math, we have all sorts of fun with the number game. I say 3 or 4 numbers (like 4-7-2-9) and you give me the name of the number (4 thousand 7 hundred and twenty-nine), I can't ever stump you anymore! You like adding and subtracting too (just the single-digit numbers so far), and you are always counting to one hundred - sometimes by ones, or by twos or by 5s or 10s.
You've had a great year at outdoor soccer (your second season) chasing that ball from end-to-end, and finding your groove on the field. It's been really fun watching you play, there is always a huge smile on your face as you run. The other sport you're showing great improvement in is swimming, moving up to "sunfish" level next, and having a blast in the water as you learn.
I'm looking forward to your next year, to see how you blossom in kindergarten, to see you continue to be nothing short of wonderful.
Love,
Mommy